DESIGN West: How to win with Kickstarter

Does your entrepreneurial idea have a shot at crowd-sourced financing? What would you need to do to ensure your crowd-funded, startup is successful? Find out the answers to these questions and more at the DESIGN West session Why I Failed Kickstarter and My Friends Didn't, on Wednesday, April 24 in San Jose, Calif.

[Click here to register for DesignCon 2013, April 22-25 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. Options range from an All-Access Pass -- which includes Black Hat (security) Conference Session to Free Expo Admission].

Bob Baddeley, founder of Portable Scores will describe two Kickstarter projects which were launched on the same day. He'll analyze why he believes his friend's launch succeeded at Nomiku but his own Portable Scores failed to reach its funding goal. He'll also tell how he resurrected his failed project by emulating other successful campaigns at Kickstarter.

"Running a crowdfunding campaign takes a lot of work," said Baddeley. "You need to be very well prepared and go after every media outlet if you hope to attract enough attention."

After Baddeley graduated as a Computer Engineer from Oregon State University he worked for seven years at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory doing government research before brain-storming Portable Scores. His idea was to provide an inexpensive portable scoreboard for soccer, baseball, football and other sports like boxing where their are typically no professional scoreboards available.

Portable Scores founder Bob Baddeley snext to his tri-pod mounted scoreboard, which can be updated via remote control or smartphone app.

"I just noticed that most of the sports I participate in are played at venues that did not have a scoreboard," said Baddelely. "My friends and I were just tired of forgetting the score, turn or time left, so I founded Portable Scores."

His first job was to build a prototype, for which he applied to HAXLR8R, a venture fund which sponsors a three-month junket to Shenzhen China twice a year where it plugs entrepreneurs into the realities of mass production. In exchange for an equity interest it provides seed funding, lab and office space, as well as mentorship while startups craft working prototypes capable of being mass produced.

"HAXLR8R took over 100 applications and chose 10 winners to go to China, including both Portable Scores and Nomiku," said Baddeley. "We visited factories in China and learned how to design our prototypes for mass production."

Upon returning to the U.S., all the prototypes were displayed on HAXLR8R Demo Day where traditional venture capitalists and angle investors were invited to view them. Unfortunately, none offered to provide the funding necessary to do an initial manufacturing run in a Chinese factory.

Another consideration is market size. Many Kickstarter projects appear to a very wide audience. A scoreboard, on the other hand, need only be purchased once per venue. While the players would appreciate it, only the venue owner (school) is likely to buy and they're not well positioned to make impulsive investments in uncertain projects. They are also likely to seek a permanent installation rather than a lightweight portable unit which might get broken or taken.

Actually, market size on this is much larger than the venues alone. My niece has played softball since she was 8. Many of the places where she played had no affiliation with the team she was playing on. I can see this being marketed to teams or sports organizations, not venues. Being portable, a team or organization can invest in one or more and move it from event to event. Having attended many of my niece’s games where parents were constantly bugging the score keeper for the current score, this would have made a big difference.

I think in many cases there is an attraction to either a large group (say techies) or a real market for the product (low cost neat gadget). If a product has the "that is really cool I want one" factor it is more likely to be funded. Even good ideas may not get the attention and funding needed. I am sure that marketing and getting the word out is a big help.

Biggest problem with Kickstarter is they only accept PROJECT funding, No BUSINESS start-ups or funding. must have a start and ending result . Also the SEC has NOT completed the specifics on applying the JOBS Act and probably will not until some time in 2014 or 2015...so you cannot use any crowd funding to buy "Equity" in your company !!! I have tried "Indiegogo" But only artsy and humanitarian stuff gets funding from the readership...

I recently pulled out a kickstarter project after it had gathered only $1K of the $25K goal, with one week left to go. It was a univeral super-IO card for the Raspberry PI computer. Given the buzz around the PI, and the 1M units they sold, I expected a rush. I'm still not sure why it failed but one thing is certain: posting a project alone is not sufficient. It is up to you to draw attention to it. I posted notice to the most popular Raspberry PI forums and got some attention, but that was not enough to get traction. I will be reposting soon with lower funding target, new rewards, photos of a real prototype (was 3D rendering before). Wish me luck.